This article contains a major spoiler for The Last of Us season two... you have officially been warned!
If, like us, you've spent all morning crying into the remainders of your Easter eggs, then you must have seen The Last of Us season two episode two.
In the second episode, we watched in horror as Joel - played by Pedro Pascal - meets his tragic end. And no, after surviving in a post-apocalyptic world for years, it's ironically not the cordyceps that kills him off.
In fact, Joel is brutally beaten to death by Abby who has spent the last five years hunting him down since he killed her father (one of the Firefly doctors) to save Ellie - played by Bella Ramsey - at the end of season one.
Fans of The Last of Us video game might have seen this coming, but none of us expected to lose Joel so early on into season two, which makes us wonder: how did Pedro and Bella react to the twist?
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Pedro admitted that he always knew his character would be killed off eventually but, like viewers, perhaps didn't think it would happen right at the start of season two.
"It's not like they said, 'Hey, we kill you at the beginning of season two'," he said, adding: "But it was always an understanding that it would stay true to the source material in a specific way and that the, let's say, practical and exclusive obligation would be for season one. It was just a matter of how and when."
Pedro went on to say he's in "active denial" about the death of Joel and the fact the series has come to an end for him. For that reason, he admitted he tries not to think about it as it makes him "sad".
This is a feeling shared by Pedro's co-star, Bella. "I knew that Joel was going to die but reading it in the script I was dreading getting to that bit… and I cried," they told Entertainment Weekly. "I actually sobbed my little heart out. It's the first time I've cried from reading a piece of writing."
As for why the show's creators opted to kill Joel off so early on in season two, there's a reason for that, which they explained to Variety. "There's a danger of tormenting people. It's not what we want to do," co-creator Craig Mazin said of the "f**king horrible" storyline.
"If people know it's coming, they will start to feel tormented. And people who don't know it's coming are going to find out it's coming, because people are going to talk about the fact that it hasn't shown up yet," he went on.
RIP Joel!
Watch now The Last of Us is available on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
